EDA to hold workshops on Sandy biz program

New Jersey's Economic Development Authority (EDA), facing criticism over delays in getting grants to businesses damaged by Superstorm Sandy, will hold a series of workshops around the state to help businesses complete their grant applications.

Businesses with an application in progress will be able to make an appointment, sit down with the business advisor handling their case and work out application problems with a goal of completing it by the end of the day, said Michele Brown, CEO of the EDA, which administers the main grant program to help businesses damaged in the storm.

The plan comes about a month after more than a dozen businesses gathered at a meeting in Highlands - among them owners of a spa, restaurants, a beach club, trucking companies and a bakery - to complain about of months of delays, excessive requests for documents, constant changes in case managers and an incomprehensible application process.

The EDA's first workshop will take place next week, and there will be two a week throughout May, and perhaps into June, Brown said Thursday. Her office said the exact dates and locations have yet to be determined.

'What we plan to do is to go into the municipality, make appointments with businesses that have pending applications, tell them precisely what they need to do with their application and with luck, complete it," she said. "What we have found is when you have these individual meetings with businesses, that face-to-face, one-on-one, is simply more productive."

The EDA has run local workshops in the past, but has not targeted specific local businesses with cases pending, Brown said.

Brown outlined the workshop initiative at a visit, with Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, D-Secaucus, to Custom Steel Contractors, a Kearny steel fabricator that was badly damaged when water from both the Hackensack and Passaic rivers flooded the company's factory during the storm.

Daniel Moran, the company's president, said it suffered more than $500,000 in damage, was closed for a month and only partially in operation for the next two months. When the company received a $50,000 grant from the EDA in November under the Stronger NJ Business Grant program, it was close to going out of business, Moran said.

The program awards grants of up to $50,000 to applicants that have suffered at least $5,000 in damage due to the storm. To date, the agency has approved 430 grants totaling $48 million, and has another 1,100 applications waiting to be completed.